What We Do

Biorepository for Psychiatric Research

The NIMH Repository and Genomics Resource (NRGR) is
one of several data repositories funded by National Institutes of Health (NIH). We are the only NIH
repository that specializes in offering the research community DNA, RNA, and cell lines from large collections
of individuals with psychiatric illness and psychiatrically normal controls. At a minimum we provide basic
demographic and diagnostic data on all our biosamples; for most of our biosamples we have detailed diagnostic
data, frequently item level data on major assessment instruments, available for download. We also have
genotype, DNA sequence, and gene expression data associated with a subset of our biosamples.

Different data repositories specialize in managing different types of data, and data from a single individual
may be deposited into multiple different repositories. The NIH, guided by the new strategic plan for data
science, is working to optimize integration between repositories to maximize the utility of all collected data,
but currently researchers may need to navigate several additional repositories to obtain all available data on
a given subject:

The NIMH Data Archive (NDA)
holds clinical, imaging, and
neurosignal data on subjects from a wide range of
NIMH studies, but only a fraction of the studies in the NDA are in the NRGR, as the NDA includes very many
studies without a genetic component.

The database of Genotypes and Phenotypes
(dbGaP) is an NIH-wide repository of phenotypic and genomic data, but only a fraction of the studies in
dbGAP are in the NRGR, as dbGAP includes many studies that are not related to psychiatric illness.

The CommonMind Consortium
Knowledge
Portal provides sequencing and expression data from postmortem brain
samples from donors with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and controls with no psychiatric illness. While
biomaterials from these subjects are not available at the NRGR, researchers can
apply for access to these
data through the NRGR.

The PsychENCODE
Knowledge Portal
provides data on non-coding regulatory elements and epigenetic
modifications from subjects with psychiatric illness and controls, primarily from studies of postmortem
brain samples. While biomaterials from these subjects are not available at the NRGR, researchers
can apply for access to these data through the NRGR.